Recently in the journal Applied Physics Letters was published an article devoted to the development of the structure of ferroelectric nonvolatile memory or MELRAM (magnetoelectric RAM). The development, was created by Russian scientists in collaboration with French scientists. In the design and prototype development , specialists from the Moscow Physicotechnical Institute (MFTI), VA Kotelnikov Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the
International Associate Laboratory LIA LICS were engaged.
In the future, it turns out to create a cell on a nanometer scale, and the prototype measures about one millimeter, there is hope to see a magnetoresistive memory much simpler in structure than the modern ReRAM with complex magnetoresistive tunnel junctions. But the main goal is the dream that MELRAM will be able to replace the DRAM in the future. The latter, as is known, requires a constant procedure for data regeneration, since the unit cell DRAM is a banal capacitor with control from a
transistor.
Memory MELRAM, on the contrary, will be non-volatile and consumes little. Researchers talk about a potential of 10,000 times and even more reduce the consumption of the memory cell in case of switching to MELRAM. However, while there are problems with energy independence. For the early prototypes, large magnetic field sensors were used to read the data, which is simply impossible to scale. Data from the cell of the new prototype is read using short pulses, as is customary for ReRAM.
However, during the reading process, the data in the cells are destroyed (this is the nature of the cell) and a data regeneration operation is required. This will reduce the energy efficiency limits of the MELRAM cell, but among the 10,000-fold prize this will be invisible.
As for the structure of MELRAM, it is the following. The basic element of the cell is a piezoelectric material. The piezoelectric is different in that it can produce stress in the event of physical deformation and deform in the event of a voltage supply. This is the MELRAM control. A memory element of MELRAM was a multi-layered construction on the surface of a piezoelectric - several layers of terbium and cobalt (TbCo2) and a layer of iron and cobalt (FeCo). Under the action of
a deforming piezoelectric, the multilayer magnetoelastic design changes the direction of magnetization. Depending on the magnetic field vector, this can be interpreted as "0" or as "1", which is equivalent to writing to a cell in the data bit.
Development is in the early stages of research. The current dimensions of the prototype do not allow to hope for the rapid appearance of significantly improved elements of MELRAM. Related Products :
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